I’m So Board

Print ‘n Play. Lots of people seem to be trying this in one form or another at the moment, which has led to some fascinating discussions about cardboard. No really, it’s riveting stuff… hey come back! where are you going?

Some people have been using foamcore for printing game tiles and the like onto. It’s expensive (about £8 for an A1 sheet) very thick (about 5-6mm) and really tricky to cut without tearing. This led me to look for alternatives, something between the standard thin card you can buy in most stationers and the mega thick foamcore stuff. I have to admit it was hairyhatfield that put me onto the answer – it’s called greyboard. It’s the of the sort of thick grey card you get at the back of a notebook or pad of paper.

I wasn’t sure what thickness to go for so I ordered 50 sheets each of 1200micron (aka 1.2mm) and 2000micron (aka 2mm) greyboard to see what worked best. I ordered from http://www.papercutz.co.uk/ (it was also hairyhatfield who told me about this site) who, from what I could tell, were one of the few online places selling this sort of thing in relatively small qualities (after all I didn’t want 30,000 sheets of the stuff!)

So here’s a couple of pictures to give you an idea of the thickness, as I had no real frame of reference myself I figured this might be handy for other people to see too. There’s a token from Arkham Horror and a Carcassonne tile next to the card, for reference. I’m concerned the 2mm stuff might be a real bugger to cut through, but we will see. I hope to get started on making a copy of RoboRally Express using this greyboard soon.

1.2mm thick greyboard, chunky but thinner than most game tokens/tiles

2mm thick greyboard, same thickness as standard game tokens/tiles. Hope I can cut it !